


Split

by Leamas



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types
Genre: Bill Haydon's adventures in Sarratt, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9680216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: So many of Bill's thoughts lead him to Moscow.





	

Once Bill might have felt a surge of humiliation when the doors opened on him and Polyakov, exposing like lovers caught with their pants around their ankles. Another Bill might have been angry to be interrupted like that, to find himself face-to-face with Smiley of all people – it was he Bill remembered most clearly, although he had said the least that night and looked only like he wished to be somewhere else – but that layer of himself had fallen away. There was nothing more to hide.

It did not surprise him when Peter pulled him out of his chair and shook his limp body across the room like he didn’t know what to do with it – it felt like the natural next step; a long time ago he agreed to pay the cost for what he did, and this was just one of many instalments.

Later, in custody, when the first punch finally came – blunt and unrefined and brimming with an anger drawn from the same source as Peter’s, but lasting longer – when that punch came, he thought of Karla.

On his smallest finger on his left hand, the nail lacked the initiative to even grow to the end of his finger. The nail on his right middle finger split down the middle. From his recollection – and he had a lot of time to remember, on his way to Sarratt and then at Sarratt – Karla never seemed to notice the state of his own hands as much as he noticed the attention Bill paid to them. 

For all the physical abuse that Bill would endure he could not call a single one an act of brutality. 

 

A favourite line of questioning they rolled out for several days in a row – a line of questioning that Bill found very tiring - was, “When were you approached?” and “How were you a recruited?” 

“At Oxford,” he offered. “Years ago.”

“What year?” his favourite interrogator asked. Bill remembered his name to be Glenn, although he hadn’t introduced himself since Bill’s arrival. If his memory served him – and it did; Bill never forgot a face – Glenn had once been one of his recruits.

Judging the force of his backhanded slaps, Bill didn’t think Glenn forgot this either. To his credit Bill never expected to be treated kindly.

“Oh, let me think,” Bill said, after a particularly nasty crack, one that left his right ear ringing. It looked like Glenn was going to strike him again, but he pulled back when Bill leaned forward and rested his forehead in his hands.

“Be specific.” 

“What do you want?” Bill finally snapped. “A bloody minute-by-minute account of that day?”

He heard in the silence that yes, actually, that would be splendid. It wasn’t like Bill didn’t remember, or like he hadn’t re-examined that day countless times by now, collecting details and shaving away strips of uncertainty over the years. It wasn’t like it wasn’t a scene he revisited often, sometimes tinged with nostalgia for those early days where his future still lay untouched in front of him, and at other times with such a yearning for objective fact that startled even him.

It was a day he was familiar with, and now, after months of regularly taking it out of his pocket to touch it and re-examine it, the memory was very warm. It wore the thumbprints of his moods as he’d handled it in recent months: a thrill at being in the final stretch of a journey he embarked on years ago; the grief of everything he’d paid for this journey with.

He could recite the whole day from memory, but for what? For the lousy entertainment of men who would still be nothing if not for him?

(Karla, small and lithe, and how perfectly proportional the rest of his stature was: slight and poised. Bill was tall, but his shoulders didn’t stretch as far as he thought they could and no part of him was filled in. Karla was everything Bill wasn’t: every line in his figure was closed, and everything that could be filled in had been, leaving a solid, unmovable mass.)

(How brown Karla’s eyes were, and how patient. While he listened to Bill speak he watched with an impenetrable gaze reminiscent of how he imagined a piece of artwork might feel after finally falling into the hands of a fair, experienced critic.)

(When he lit a cigarette for himself his eyelids fluttered halfway closed, like he was watching the flame like it could vanish. When Karla looked back up at Bill his unwavering attention resumed as dutifully as ever, and god, Bill thought he could love him.)

“You can’t have it,” Bill said, and met the backhanded slap that followed with a faraway, blank expression, somewhere between resignation and being at peace with the world.

He realised, sitting in that falsely lit room, in the company of people who wanted to do far worse than just slap him, that Bill had also expected worse, should his cover be blown and everything be brought to the surface. Again, he thought of Karla.

For a brief moment he felt proud of the stinging in his cheek, because he had never lied to himself about the danger he was in, and because not once had he thought himself above such degrading treatment.

And he was proud, too, because the Sarratt man in front of him asking his questions with an open hand begging to be made into a fist wasn’t seeing the Circus’ own Darling Bill Haydon, but Bill Haydon: Soviet Agent.

Finally, his achievements were being recognised.

 

Sleep did not come easy, but Bill giving undue credit to the efforts of Sarratt and its men if he pretended they had anything to do with it. What difference did the bright lights make when his heart couldn’t settle, and his breathing raced to catch up? What did the intermediate cracks against the other side of the door accomplish that his efforts to stop his bleeding nose from suffocating him in his sleep didn’t?

 _You can’t have it_ , he thought, when he imagined the question they’d ask him to unbury answers for in the morning. It was his life’s work they were asking for, on the merit of having fallen victim to one of Karla’s longest operations. 

 _You can’t have it_ , he thought again, and against his will his thoughts raced ahead of him of himself and landed on Jim, and a conversation he had with Karla, the first time the then-unnamed mention of Operation Testify raised its head.

An irrational surge of protectiveness had welled up within him then, and for a cutting moment he thought cruelly of telling Karla to keep his hands to himself and away from what belonged to Bill. Almost as abruptly, with more force but less cruelty, a different urge buried so far inside Bill that even he didn’t recognise it pushed its way to the surface, eclipsing every doubt Bill ever might have had.

_Take my heart, Karla. Take everything I might have loved, if only I didn't love you first._


End file.
